PUZZLE #12 - His Name

"…as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ--for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name--should come among the Jews" (2nd Nephi 10:3 partial - Page 78)

Look at that phrase between the dashes again.

"for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name"

Why did the writer make this statement? That's our PUZZLE. Why didn't he just write; "...it must needs be expedient that Christ should come among the Jews"? What was he trying to clarify for us?

What word did the angel speak to Jacob that night? The angel didn't say "Christ" as we have it in English today. It had to be a word for the Savior that Jacob had not heard before, judging from his explanation in this verse. The people must not have heard this word before. In this verse it shows up as "Christ", but what was the actual word that the angel spoke to Jacob in his native Hebrew tongue?

‘Christ’ is the English transliteration of the Greek word ‘Kristos’. Why would the angel have transliterated this word into Greek for the writer? He didn't, of course.

In the Greek, ‘Kristos’ has the same meaning as the Hebrew word Mashiyack. They both mean messiah, redeemer, savior or anointed one. Did the angel say 'Mashiyack' (the Hebrew word) to Nephi? If he had, no explanation would have been necessary because Jacob knew the word Mashiyack and had used it before (2nd Nephi 6:13-14 Page 68-69).

If the angel didn't say Mashiyack, what word did he say? The angel spoke some word that Joseph Smith would translate as ‘Christ’, but a word which Jacob thought he needed to explain to us, since he had only been told the word for the first time “in the last night”.

Joseph Smith had already translated some 'reformed Egyptian' word into the word ‘Messiah’ in 1st Nephi 1:19; 10:4,5,7, 9,10,11,14,17; 12:18; 15:13 and in 2nd Nephi 1:10; 2:6,8, 26; 3:5; 6:13 and 6:14. The angel must have said something other than that word here; something new.

Would the angel have said 'Christ'? That’s what we say in English. Did Jacob then write 'C' 'h' 'r' 'i' 's' 't'? No. English wasn't invented yet.

Would the angel have given Jacob the Greek letters for Kristos; namely Kapa, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron and sigma again? No, again. Greek would not become the language of the world for another 600 years.

Once again we come back to the problem of the author knowing something of the Bible, but nothing of the time period about which he was writing. Had the text been written by some young resident of Jerusalem in B.C. 588, someone named Jacob, he would not have written what Joseph Smith wrote here.

The title ‘Christ’ would not have appeared in the text prior to the advent of that title in history. ‘Christ’ is a transliteration of the Greek word ‘Kristos’, a word that didn’t exist before the Greek language came into wide usage circa B.C. 300.

In all of the Old Testament, the name ‘Christ’ does not occur, because it did not exist. Perhaps Joseph Smith used it in his creative writing because he didn’t know any better? Perhaps the word 'Christ' slipped out of his mouth, and then he remembered that he was writing a story about people who lived before 'Christ' was used as the title of the Savior, but he knew his scribe had already heard him say it? What a PUZZLE!

Beyond this, the writer says: "that this [Christ] should be his name". 'Christ' is not the name of the Savior. It is his title. The angel would not have said; "that this [Christ] should be his name".